You have to look at the D/R/I split of the polls. It seems that alot of the variation is due to how the pollster views the electorate and how much they compensate to reach that split. For example, if you have one poll that is a D+9 and has Obama up by 3, and another is D+2 and has Romney up by 2 then they are actually pretty close to one another. Another thing to look at is how are independents splitting between Obama and Romney. Many national polls have had Romney winning the I's by high single to mid double digits. Thus the pollsters have to have a substantial D tilt to the poll to have Obama in the lead.

In 2008 the electorate turned out to be D+7. Most other recent presidential elections are closer to D+2. For the 2010 midterms it was R+1.

@Hari:Can anyone actually define "margin of error" as used by pollsters?

For example, how can two polls each with a margin of error of 3% differ by 7%?

It's essentially based on the number of people they polled, which is usually around 1000. The basic idea is that 2 out 3 polls would end up within 3% of the "true" number, and 9 out of 10 would end up within 6%.

So it's not a contradiction if they differ by more than the margin of error.

The accuracy of any poll depends critically on having a representative random sample of the population. And it is hard to poll more than a few thousand people. So margins of error are rarely going to be lower than 3-4%, and 3-4% represents the ideal case.

"The Democrat said that Obama's inner circle was dismayed at the 'disaster' and that he believed the central problem was that the President was so disdainful of Romney that he didn't believe he needed to engage with him."

In the last eight elections the better looking candidate won. During Bush v Kerry opponents were tied until Memogate. I maintain swing voters were confused by the fake accuracy of the memo and focused on the pictures every network was running which showed a narrow faced scruffy Kerry in fatigues and a young George Bush looking Hollywood handsome in a pilot uniform. When I saw those pictures I knew Bush would win.

I'm not sure who is better looking here. Obama is a handsome guy but he looks so angry and tired, and Romney is handsome as well, but not really sexy. During the debate, Romney certainly looked like the guy Hollywood would cast as president. Obama seemed to have lost his charm.

Tax Prof Blog has an interesting post that the worst states to do biz in are blue.

Wisconsin is on the list @ #43

The Tax Foundation today released the 2013 State Business Tax Climate Index (10th ed.) which ranks the fifty states according to five indices: corporate tax, individual income tax, sales tax, unemployment insurance tax, and property tax. Here are the ten states with the best and worst business tax climates:

Interestingly, all ten of the states with the worst business tax climates voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and five of the ten states with the best business tax climates voted for John McCain (and eight of the ten voted for George Bush in 2004).

edutcher mumbles:You can take the RCP average and cram it someplace. These guys have featured the most skewed polls around, but now are trying to salvage their rep when it looks as if their boy won't make the cut, after all.

Real Clear Politics isn't known for its left-wing bias and is a go-to stop for people who are knowledgeable about politics, regardless of their political stripe. They certainly don't have to worry about their rep, especially from the unemployed loser portion of the electorate.

The takeaway here is simple: Obama had a lead. And now he doesn't. Maybe he'll regain his lead, but the momentum as of today is with Romney. No skewed or unskewed polling issues, just the movement back and forth of that part of the electorate that hasn't made a final decision on who to support.

The margin of error is a standard statistical concept. It can be determined by comparing the sample size compared to the total population from which the sample is drawn. They typically specify a ~95% confidence interval, meaning that if you conducted 20 polls, you would expect 19 to be within the margin of error, and one to be outside.

However, the most important thing to note is that the margin of error assumes that there is no systematic bias introduced by the sampling method. Any error introduced by the sampling method ( and there is always some ) is in addition to the stated margin of error.

Now all of a sudden Althouse is looking at polls other than Rasmussen and Gallup, the two polling places that heavily lean Republican, because there are now other polls that favor her candidate. Funny how that works!

We have a couple more strange polls to look at this morning. The first one is CNN’s headline poll of Ohio voters, showing Obama with a four-point lead. What’s the catch? Almost one in five self-described conservatives say they’ll vote for Obama. And to that, the next question should be, “Are you freaking kidding me?” There isn’t another poll in the nation with a cross tab anything like that, and it make the entire poll suspect. Suspect? No — useless. Nolte has the full breakdown.

A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn't have access to the unusually tasty offerings.

Annika Eriksson, a lunch lady at a school in Falun, was told that her cooking is just too good.